Angels

Our culture seems to be more and more aware of angels. Reports abound of angels of traditional appearance, or superhuman rescuers, lights, voices, smells… And they can’t all be explained away. Angels are a sign of the incredible richness and diversity of the cosmos – that there are spiritual entities which are just as real as the physical. They are reported in all cultures.

One thing is clear – angels are not pretty fairies. Nor are they just handy heroes, or spiritual shopping assistants, who help out but go away when we don’t need them. They are powerful spiritual beings, far more powerful than us. Nor should we automatically assume that every angel is good… Demons are nothing but fallen angels, with all their power, but turned to deception and harm.

The word “angel” really means messenger. A messenger of whom or what? In Cosmos we believe that true angels, the angels who will benefit and enhance our lives and the well-being of the natural world, are angels who are messengers of the Divine, bringing light and harmony from heaven to earth. Michael, “Who is like God”, Gabriel, “Strength of God”, Raphael, “God Heals”. The Seraphim and Cherubim, and the Guardian angels.

In Angels we have drawn on diverse sources. The text of Angels is an ancient hymn of the Greek Christian community of Alexandria, Egypt, sung for the celebration of their Mysteries:

The melody is a balance for the heavenly text: an earthy French Noel. The second verse brings in a new tune in the old folk tradition of the contrechant of the Rouergue, in the South of France: one voice has the melody, the other weaves a melody against it. Earth responds to heaven, the song springs up from the soil. As Angels ends on the Chord of Eternity, earth and sky, divine and human are united in the song and dance of the angels.

Develop a more conscious relationship with your own guardian angel who loves, embraces and supports your creative talents. Invoke the strength of Gabriel, the healing of Raphael, the awesome Seraphim and Cherubim, until Michael, who is like God, brings God to you and you into God.

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Season of the Dead

November is a time of death. After the fruitfulness of autumn, the darkness grows, and the leaves fall and die, taken into the earth from which they drew their nourishment. There are more human deaths at this time of year too. We are confronted with the stark reality of death, of that total separation as far as this world is concerned. Death is as much part of nature as growth and love. Bereavement, with its phases of denial/bargaining, anger, and grief follow. But because we are opened up, it is also a time when we are more open to the spiritual – an originary moment. Even though we may be dumbfounded and angry, the desire and need to stay connected with our loved one opens a need to connect with them now on a spiritual, metaphysical plane. And this can be a point of new contact with our own spiritual needs, a place of beginning... Just as the leaves die, and disappear, and turn to earth, which nourishes new growth in the spring, so the pain of loss can be the impetus for spiritual growth, a deeper awareness.

The dance takes us on a journey of grieving, to light and peace at last. The music is based on the Gregorian funeral chant, Requiem aeternam. Here is a translation of the Latin text:

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon them:
May they rest in peace.
Yours is a hymn in Sion, O God;
Let prayer be made to you in Jerusalem.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon them:
May they rest in peace.

As the melody develops, it returns to its roots in the Jewish chants of the Jerusalem Temple, roots which is shares with Armenian and Byzantine chant, which have been particular inspirations here. This common source is also shared with Islamic chant. The melody gains volume and power, confronting the most violent deaths. Atom Egoyan’s Ararat, a film about memory of the Armenian Genocide, is a particular inspiration. But the moment of death is not the end – by grace the soul rises up through the ether: the soul which journeys to light if its earthly life has not been completed closed to love. Even as we see the horror of death, especially the outrage of death inflicted in the name of religion, our dance, our prayer is one of hope in resurrection, of the reunion of bodies, souls and communities, transformed and immortal.

The music of Season of the Dead is dedicated to the victims of all religious genocides: some of the worst, in chronological order, the long-forgotten genocide of Balkan Muslims in the 19th century, the Armenian, the Jewish Holocaust, and the ongoing persecution, expulsion and killing of the Buddhists of Tibet, Christians in China, Pakistan, Sudan and the Middle East, and people of many religions in Iraq. May the dead rest in peace. May their loved ones be given healing and new spiritual connection with them, and their persecutors – and the darkness of violence and prejudice in all of us – be healed by the Light.

Another great inspiration was the great but little-known 4th century poet, Prudentius, beautifully embodying autumn spirituality, here in Helen Waddell’s translation:

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
to thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
noble even in its ruin.

Once was this a spirit’s dwelling,
by the breath of God created.
High the heart that here was beating,
Christ the prince of all its living.

Guard him well, the dead I give thee,
not unmindful of his creature
shall he ask it: he who made it
symbol of his mystery.

Comes the hour God hath appointed
to fulfil the hope of men,
then must thou, in very fashion,
what I give, return again.

Not though ancient time decaying
wear away these bones to sand,
ashes that a man might measure
in the hollow of his hand:

Not though wandering winds and idle,
drifting through the empty sky,
scatter dust was nerve and sinew,
is it given to man to die.

Once again the shining road
leads to ample Paradise;
open are the woods again,
that the serpent lost for men.

Take, O take him, mighty leader,
take again thy servant's soul.
Grave his name, and pour the fragrant
balm upon the icy stone.

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The Mystery of Time

The final dance in Origins is music of spheres, the dance of the astral bodies, whose movement gives the earth light and the division of time. The vast scale of space, and of time. Time which we always seem so short of, but Time – if we give time – which heals. The Mystery of Time is from the cosmic perspective.

The music draws on medieval knowledge of sacred number, mode and harmony, and on ancient hymns by Prudentius and Venantius Fortunatus, which reveal the secret, cosmic meaning of Christmas – secret only because we are too hurried to see it. So let us be still, to enter into the dance of the Mystery of Time.

Of the Father’s love begotten
Ere the world from chaos rose,
He is Alpha: from that fountain
All that is and has flows.
He is Omega: of all things yet to come
The mystic Close.
Evermore and evermore.

The creation of the world – not just the Big Bang, the evolutionary process, but every instant of things coming into being. And yet a primeval time too, the dawning of light, and of the spiritual Light shining through matter, filling all things in peace. But the melody is hidden, in minor key and double time, tempus imperfectum, time incomplete.

But something went wrong. There is evil in the world. Even in ourselves, in spite of our talents and capacity to love, we let others down and let ourselves down. Nature suffers through this too – human greed which has brought about global warming. A sense of a fall. The music rise briefly, only to fall in a fast chromatic collapse.

But it is not all loss and destruction. Humankind discovers agriculture, the Age of Taurus. Earth and sky, humankind and – felt distantly – God. A new melody in a simple dialogue, the desire to be saved from all this, restoration. Come, thou Redeemer of the earth.

This dialogue, both wistful and peaceful, follows six cycles, and then shifts abruptly into conflict – the Age of Aries, the age of war. Yet in all the striving and violence and destruction there is a spiritual quest – dissatisfaction with the status quo, searching for more. Until…

War ends in exhaustion. Yet the watchers and holy ones have been waiting. The last discordant cry of war was the Chord of Eternity, which is now quietly raised up, a miracle of grace. The Word speaks from and on high, and descends into the womb of her who hears, to be enfleshed, to bring spirit back to matter. The light shines, we are with Christmas. The marriage of Heaven and Earth.

Blessed be that Day forever,
When the Virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving,
Bore the Saviour of our race,
And the child, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face,
Evermore and evermore.

We have entered the Age of Pisces, Christ the Fish, Ichthys, according to the acronym of the first Christians:

Iesous
CHristos
THeou
Yios
Soter

Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour.

So we cannot just sit in our comfort zone. The fishing stories in the Gospels represent the unconscious yearnings in us being brought to the surface, spirituality being activated in our lives. For this we need the light to shine on the dark places in us. The original light comes back, and jars against our singing, challenges us. We must be purified, transformed, if we are going to become spiritual and heal our world, and not just talk about it. We must journey, like the Zoroastrian Magi, following the Star.

This is He whom seer and sibyl
Sang for ages long gone by,
This is He of old revealed
In the page of prophecy;
Lo! He comes, the promised Saviour,
Let the world His praises cry,
Evermore and evermore.

And when the time is right, the cosmos will be transformed – the coming of the Cosmos Christ.

Let the storm and blaze of sunlight,
Flowing stream and sounding shore,
Sea and forest, frost and zephyr,
Day and night their Lord adore:
Glory to the Father, glory to the Son,
Glory to the Spirit,
Evermore and evermore.

Time is perfected, completed, according to medieval symbolism, in three threes, 9/8. The melody opens out like a kaleidoscope as it joins the dance of the stars, the harmonies of the earthly choir are enriched in the colours of the heavenly city, colours sought for in humanity’s striving. Not in discord, not in conflict, but in harmonies which point to the Age of Light. Time is completed.

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